Drug Rant

We are buying scorpion antivenom FROM MEXICO!  Why?  American drug companies don't want to mess with a product that only a few hundred Americans might need each year!  After all, where's the billion dollar profit in that?

The wholesale price on the drug is $3,500 a dose, and requires 3 doses, so costs the hospital nearly $10,000 for a full course of treatment.  Considering aspirin costs $5 a pair at most hospitals, the price to desperate, dying patients will be more like $50,000.

Which is not the real point of this rant.  We're buying a lifesaving drug from Mexico.  Is this the state of American drug companies?  Drug companies in the (arguably) most powerful nation on Earth should make every possible drug to promote our health and well-being.  Considering the massive profits American drug companies pull in, helping the whole world shouldn't be out of reach.  So what's going on?

Shady business is what's going on.  Of the drugs still made in America, 80% of the ingredients to make and package them are imported, mostly from India and China.  Our very health is in the hands of foreign suppliers.  Could it get worse?

Yes.  American drug companies are simply not producing some important drugs, resulting in dangerous, even deadly shortages.  Health care providers are forced to use more expensive and/or less effective alternatives.  The result is cancers untreated, pain unmanaged, and even some deaths due to incorrect doses of unfamiliar alternate drugs.

American drug companies have become our enemy, putting profit ahead of patients.  Like many other corporations, the leadership of our drug companies have decided to loot America.  Upper management is getting richer while we suffer.  CEOs are becoming billionaires while we die.  How long must this go on?

Until we declare War on the Looting of America.  Criminally greedy businessmen are taking advantage of all the rest of America.  They are bending capitalism to the breaking point to get richer and richer.  We need to jail these evildoers, nationalize any company that by policy or action hurts Americans, and confiscate the riches of anyone involved with harming us.

Or let things go on as is until the Citizens of America are forced to rise up and take action themselves.  Crazy?  Sure, but history shows that if Citizens are ignored, hanging ropes and guillotines will eventually come out.  Let's hope our government is paying attention.